Nice

Use in the book

The personal and educational examples concern delicacy in different causal stories. A gentlewoman’s disgust at a dissection is intensified by a physician’s loathsome comparisons; his speech helps to produce distress which his later skill and persuasion cannot remove for months. Nice education belongs to the argument against excessive coddling: upbringing shapes habit, and habit becomes another nature, weakening body and mind. The marginal Quintilian material supports the complaint against indulgence, although its printed chapter number differs from the identified passage.

Nice gentlewomen also belong to Burton’s contrast between labour and leisure. He claims that working servants rarely suffer the disorder under discussion, whereas idle women in comfortable houses are more prone to it. This is his class-based and gendered physiological account. The next paragraph importantly distinguishes women he blames for not resisting from many modest and virtuous women whose constitutions, he says, overcome their intentions.

In the games discussion, too nicely criticizes objections made with excessive scruple. Burton approves Gataker’s defence of cards, tables and dice as innocent recreations in themselves, while immediately allowing justified objection and prohibition when they are abused. The contrast is between the inherent activity and harmful conduct, not between all criticism and unrestricted permission. The coordinated nice and curious likewise describes excessive scruple in Burton’s criticism of schismatics who reject ceremonies even in matters neither required nor forbidden by religion.

Fastidiousness can burden ordinary life. Nice minds make occupations intolerable through needless refinement; a strict dietary regime is too nice specifically for healthier bodies. The water story condemns Calis’s extreme selectiveness, but its moralized death and historical identities remain unverified. Burton then permits any water in necessity while still preferring pure water. Lovers of both sexes can also become nice over dress and grooming, making exact appearance their chief concern.

The medical applications retain their argumentative limits. Nice idle townsmen appear in an attack on dependence upon medicine, but Burton later expressly defends the profession and separates use from abuse. Nice can also mean delicate in Dioscorides’s exclusions from a violent historical drug. The subsequent debate reports favourable opinions as well as danger, conditions of bodily strength and warnings against reckless administration. These are historical accounts, not treatment guidance.

Courtship brings together reserve and difficulty in pleasing. In the literary sequence about pursuit, nice becomes reserve; the ensuing claim that resistance conceals willingness is a convention of the quoted account, not evidence of consent. Another passage contrasts willingness at particular times and toward particular men with later withholding. Burton also calls women who reject all suitors nice, and criticizes would-be husbands who demand an emperor’s range of choices. His invitation to abandon such selectiveness and marry follows the admission that marriage may turn out well or badly.

Fair nice peeces is a dismissive description of beautiful, fastidious women: fair concerns beauty, nice fastidiousness, and peeces turns people into things or creatures. It appears in the generalization about fear of age and dirty linen, and again in a husband’s suspicion that a beautiful wife does not love him. The second passage identifies a possible cause of jealousy; fastidiousness itself does not prove infidelity. Finally, nice distinctions and nice points concern minute intellectual refinements. Burton attacks scholastic controversy in one place and, in another, questions about election misapplied to oneself until they produce torment. The latter account also warns against both terrifying preaching and complacent reassurance.

Related entries

Curiosity: Exactness, over-scrupulous inquiry and difficult-to-please behaviour

Custom and education: Upbringing, habit and second nature

Recreate: Recreation and its permitted use

Indifferent: Practices neither inherently commanded nor forbidden

Places to read

1. Democritus Junior to the Reader · paragraphs 14–16the combined nice and curious in a polemic against excessive religious scruple
2. Subsection 2 The Quantity of Food as a Cause · paragraphs 33–35dietary fastidiousness expressly qualified by healthier bodies
3. Subsection 2 Education as a Cause of Melancholy · paragraphs 52–54coddling, over-delicate upbringing and habit becoming nature
4. Subsection 3 Terrors and Frights as Causes of Melancholy · paragraphs 12–14the gentlewoman’s disgust intensified by the physician’s speech
5. Subsection 7. A Collection of Other Events That Cause Melancholy: The Death of Friends, Losses, and So On · paragraphs 33–35fastidious minds, needless demands and the limits of inquiry
6. Subsection 7. A Collection of Other Events That Cause Melancholy: The Death of Friends, Losses, and So On · paragraphs 21–23the disparaging fair nice peeces and dread of lost beauty
7. Subsection 4 Symptoms of Melancholy in Unmarried Women, Nuns and Widows · paragraphs 8–10delicate gentlewomen, labour and leisure, followed by the qualification for involuntary suffering
8. Section 2. Member 1. Subsection 1. Diet Corrected in the Choice of Food · paragraphs 31–35Calis’s extreme selectiveness, necessity and the continued preference for pure water
9. Member 4 Exercise of Body and Mind Regulated · paragraphs 49, 1–2excessive scruple about games, with justified objections to abuse retained
10. Member 1 Subsection 1 Medical Treatment by Medicines · paragraphs 44–45, 1fastidious townsmen in the rhetorical attack on medicine
11. Member 1 Subsection 1 Medical Treatment by Medicines · paragraphs 22–24Burton’s explicit defence of medicine and distinction between use and abuse
12. Member 2 Subsection 1 Single Substances That Purge Upwards · paragraphs 36–41delicate people excluded from white hellebore in the historical debate, with dangers and later qualifications
13. Persistence and Opportunity of Time and Place; Meetings, Conversation, Singing, Dancing, Music, Amorous Tales and Sights, Kissing, Familiarity, Tokens, Gifts, Bribes, Promises, Declarations, Tears, and So On · paragraphs 1–10reserve, differing occasions and the literary claim about concealed willingness
14. Member 4 Subsection 1 Symptoms or Signs of Love Melancholy in Body and Mind Good and Bad Signs and So Forth · paragraphs 2–4excessive particularity in the dress and grooming of lovers of both sexes
15. Subsection 5 The Last and Best Cure for Love Melancholy Is to Let Lovers Have Their Desire · paragraphs 38–40difficult-to-please women and the Daphne comparison; the nice attestation itself is on the unnumbered verso
16. Subsection 5 The Last and Best Cure for Love Melancholy Is to Let Lovers Have Their Desire · paragraphs 37–39excessively selective would-be husbands and the conditional imperial comparison
17. Subsection 5 The Last and Best Cure for Love Melancholy Is to Let Lovers Have Their Desire · paragraphs 42–44the invitation to abandon selectiveness after conceding marriage’s uncertain outcome
18. Causes of Jealousy. Who Are Most Susceptible. Idleness, Melancholy, Impotence, Prolonged Absence, Beauty, Sexual Licence, Being Unfaithful Themselves. Temptations Arising From Time, Place and People; Mistreatment as a Cause · paragraphs 56–58the fair nice peece in a possible cause of jealousy, with suspicion distinct from proof
19. General Symptoms: Love of Their Own Sect; Hatred of All Other Religions; Obstinacy and Ill Temper; Readiness to Undergo Any Danger or Adversity for It; Martyrs; Blind Zeal and Blind Obedience; Fasts and Vows; Belief in Incredible and Impossible Things. Particular Symptoms Among Pagans, Muslims, Jews and Christians; and Among Christians, Heretics Old and New, Schismatics, Scholastic Theologians, Prophets, Enthusiasts and So On · paragraphs 6–8minute distinctions in Burton’s anti-scholastic polemic
20. Causes of Despair: The Devil, Melancholy, Meditation, Distrust, Weakness of Faith, Harsh Ministers, Misunderstanding Scripture, Guilty Consciences, and So On · paragraphs 30–33subtle questions about election, mistaken self-application and dangers in opposite kinds of preaching

In this edition

“nice Gentlewoman” becomes “delicate gentlewoman”; “nice education,” “delicate upbringing”; “nice gentlewomen,” “delicate gentlewomen”; and “too nicely,” “too scrupulously.” Delicate and scrupulously preserve the personal, educational and moral distinctions. The games passage still permits justified criticism of abuse.

In the sequence “busie, nice, curious wits,” nice contributes fastidious to “restless, fastidious, over-inquisitive minds.” By contrast, “nice & curious schismaticks” becomes “over-scrupulous schismatics”: two original adjectives share one modern equivalent. The lovers’ clothing construction gives nice as particular within a larger coordinated description. “Fair nice peeces” becomes “these beautiful, fastidious creatures,” with these supplied from the preceding examples.

“Most averse, nice and coy” becomes “all resistance, reserve and coyness,” turning the adjectives into nouns while keeping the three contributions distinct. Elsewhere “so nice” becomes “so fastidious” or “so particular,” and the marriage invitation renders nice as hard to please. “Nice distinctions” becomes “minute distinctions,” and “such nice points” becomes “these subtle questions,” identifying an intellectual object rather than a pleasant quality.

fair nice piece

Printed “fair nice peeces” (English; phrase).

Beautiful, fastidious women, dismissively described: fair means beautiful, nice fastidious, peeces persons or creatures.

Here: The phrase labels women said to dread age and dirty linen.

Context: Burton generalizes after learned anecdotes about lost beauty; the wording is his gendered disparagement, not an established psychological fact.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: fair nice peeces

Modern rendering: these beautiful, fastidious creatures

Word and construction: Fair supplies beautiful, nice fastidious and peeces creatures; these is supplied to connect with the preceding examples.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.

Further local use

Printed “fair nice peece” (English; phrase).

Citation key: fair nice piece.

Here: Fair means beautiful, nice fastidious, and peece a dismissive term for the woman.

Context: The husband begins to suspect he is unloved; Burton presents this as a possible cause of jealousy and adds his own approving as well he may. The adjective nice does not itself prove infidelity.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: some fair nice peece

Modern rendering: some beautiful, fastidious creature

Word and construction: Each of the three lexical components has its own modern equivalent; some remains.

Sense relation: The same disparaging description reappears in an account of a husband’s suspicion.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.

nice · local use 1

Printed “nice” (English; lemma).

Fastidious or excessively particular.

Here: Over-particular minds make ordinary occupations intolerable through needless refinement.

Context: Burton contrasts these minds with duller apprehensions and criticizes needless cares, expense and labour, not every act of inquiry.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: busie, nice, curious wits

Modern rendering: restless, fastidious, over-inquisitive minds

Word and construction: Nice contributes fastidious; busie restless, curious over-inquisitive and wits minds.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.

Further local use

Printed “nice” (English; lemma).

Citation key: nice.

Here: The rigid dietary regime is too fussy for healthier bodies.

Context: The qualification to sounder bodies limits the criticism; the following passage also criticizes excessive fasting.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: to sounder bodies this is too nice and most absurd

Modern rendering: For healthier bodies this is excessively fussy and utterly absurd

Word and construction: Nice supplies fussy, too supplies excessively; the comparison of bodily health and the second judgment remain.

Sense relation: Excessive exactness applies to a diet under an explicit health qualification.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.

Further local use

Printed “nice” (English; lemma).

Citation key: nice.

Here: Calis’s refusal of common water is presented as extreme fastidiousness.

Context: Burton reports a moralizing death story whose identities and source remain unresolved; later he permits any water in necessity while preferring pure water.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: so nice as that Græcian Calis

Modern rendering: as fastidious as that Greek woman Calis

Word and construction: Nice becomes fastidious in the comparison, without verifying the anecdote.

Sense relation: The same excessive fastidiousness appears in the moralized water anecdote.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.

Further local use

Printed “nice” (English; lemma).

Citation key: nice.

Here: Nice marks exacting care over clothes and presentation by lovers of either sex.

Context: The preceding passage includes both the maiden and her suitor; the description is of excessive self-display, followed by the young man’s grooming.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: beyond all measure coy, nice, and too curious

Modern rendering: excessively fastidious, particular and painstaking

Word and construction: Nice contributes particular within a coordinated construction; the modern excessively compresses beyond all measure and the final too.

Sense relation: Excessive particularity governs the lovers’ appearance, not only appetite or inquiry.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.

nice · local use 2

Printed “nice” (English; lemma).

Reserved or withholding familiarity.

Here: Nice names reserve in the woman’s response when the suitor catches up.

Context: The surrounding poetry claims that resistance conceals willingness; this literary convention is not evidence that refusal signifies consent.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: most averse, nice and coy

Modern rendering: all resistance, reserve and coyness

Word and construction: Nice becomes reserve in a construction that turns three adjectives into three nouns; most becomes the collective all.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.

nice · local use 3

Printed “nice” (English; lemma).

Hard to please or excessively selective.

Here: Gentlewomen are accused of rejecting all suitors as unworthy.

Context: Burton follows rejected lovers’ complaints with his own emphatic generalization, illustrated by Daphne; these judgments do not establish the women’s reasons or obligations.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: so nice

Modern rendering: so fastidious

Word and construction: Nice becomes fastidious and so preserves the degree that introduces the following result.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.

Further local use

Printed “nice” (English; lemma).

Citation key: nice.

Here: The word marks exacting reserve in a contrast between different occasions and partners.

Context: Burton’s generalized account alternates willingness and refusal; neither an earlier willingness nor his interpretation establishes consent at another time.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: so nice, so surly, so demure

Modern rendering: so particular, so unapproachable, so demure

Word and construction: Nice contributes particular; surly unapproachable and demure remains demure.

Sense relation: Difficulty in pleasing is one description within the alternating courtship account.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.

Further local use

Printed “nice” (English; lemma).

Citation key: nice.

Here: People able to marry allegedly demand an imperial range of choices.

Context: The conditional anecdote says they might perhaps consent if offered all the beauties of the nation; it is not a verified account of the emperor’s family or a certainty of marriage.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: but so nice

Modern rendering: but are so particular

Word and construction: Nice becomes particular; are supplies the elliptical verb, and but retains the contrast with their ability and means.

Sense relation: The same selectiveness is criticized in people whose resources allow marriage.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.

Further local use

Printed “nice” (English; lemma).

Citation key: nice.

Here: The exhortation urges readers to give up excessively exacting demands before marriage.

Context: The rhetorical invitation follows the explicit concession that marriage may be good or bad; its tomorrow does not date the writing.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: so curious and nice

Modern rendering: so particular and hard to please

Word and construction: Curious contributes particular and nice hard to please; so modifies the coordinated description.

Sense relation: Difficulty in pleasing is the final trait criticized in the qualified marriage invitation.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.

nice distinction

Printed “nice distinctions” (English; phrase).

Minute or over-refined distinctions: nice means subtle or minutely exact, distinctions discriminations between concepts.

Here: Scholastic distinctions are disparaged as part of an invented apparatus of controversy.

Context: The long sentence is Burton’s Protestant polemic against churchmen, not proof that all the alleged questions or doctrines were universally held.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: nice distinctions

Modern rendering: minute distinctions

Word and construction: Nice becomes minute; the intellectual object is retained.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.

Further local use

Printed “nice points” (English; phrase).

Citation key: nice point.

Here: Nice means subtle; points are questions or matters for debate, here about knowing one’s election.

Context: The claim of self-torment is attributed to Luther without an exact locator; the following paragraph also warns against both terrifying preaching and complacent flattery.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: such nice points

Modern rendering: these subtle questions

Word and construction: Nice contributes subtle, points questions, and such is represented by these.

Sense relation: Intellectual refinement becomes a source of distress when questions are misapplied to oneself.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.

nice education

Printed “nice education” (English; phrase).

An excessively delicate upbringing: nice means over-delicate, education upbringing or training.

Here: Pampering is said to weaken children’s bodies and minds as habit becomes second nature.

Context: Burton invokes Fabius, or Quintilian; the marginal chapter number does not match the identified indulgence passage, and the opening second-nature maxim remains separately unlocated.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: nice education

Modern rendering: delicate upbringing

Word and construction: Nice becomes delicate and education upbringing; the excess is explicit in the surrounding coddling and the original marginal wording.

Qualification: the accompanying note describes the upbringing as over-delicate in the supplied translation, and says that it breaks the sinews of mind and body.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.

nice gentlewoman

Printed “nice Gentlewoman” (English; phrase).

A delicate or fastidious woman of gentle social standing.

Here: Nice marks susceptibility to disgust; gentlewoman identifies her social position.

Context: The reported woman is distressed by a dissection and then by a physician’s aggravating speech; he cannot restore her for months.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: this nice Gentlewoman

Modern rendering: This delicate gentlewoman

Word and construction: Nice becomes delicate; the demonstrative and noun are retained.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.

Further local use

Printed “nice gentlewomen” (English; phrase).

Citation key: nice gentlewoman.

Here: Nice gives delicate, while gentlewomen retains the social category.

Context: Burton contrasts labouring women and women of leisure in a class-based medical generalization; the next paragraph recognizes many modest women whose constitutions overcome their intentions.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: nice gentlewomen

Modern rendering: delicate gentlewomen

Word and construction: The adjective becomes delicate without removing the class-marking noun.

Sense relation: The same personal delicacy is placed within a social and physiological contrast.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.

Further local use

Printed “nice” (English; lemma).

Citation key: nice.

Here: Delicate people are among those excluded from a violent historical drug.

Context: The exclusion is attributed to Dioscorides within a debate over white hellebore; later favourable authorities do not erase the warnings about strength, suffocation and reckless use.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: nice or effeminate

Modern rendering: the delicate or effeminate

Word and construction: Nice is rendered as the noun phrase the delicate; or keeps the neighbouring category distinct.

Sense relation: Personal delicacy becomes a reported treatment exclusion, not a present prescription.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.

Further local use

Printed “nice” (English; lemma).

Citation key: nice.

Here: Nice modifies the idle townsmen singled out in the attack on medicine.

Context: The reported observation is part of a rhetorical prosecution; Burton later expressly defends medicine and distinguishes use from abuse.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: a few nice idle citizens

Modern rendering: a few fastidious, idle townsmen

Word and construction: Nice becomes fastidious; few and idle remain separate limitations.

Sense relation: Delicacy or fastidiousness is socially disparaged in the medical polemic.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.

nicely

Printed “nicely” (English; lemma).

Scrupulously or fastidiously; with too, excessively scrupulously.

Here: The objection to games as inherently unlawful is criticized as over-scrupulous.

Context: Burton endorses Gataker’s defence of innocent recreation, then immediately allows justified objection and prohibition when games are abused.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: too nicely

Modern rendering: too scrupulously

Word and construction: Too supplies excess; nicely supplies scrupulously. The adverb alone does not account for the whole phrase.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.

Further local use

Printed “nice & curious” (English; phrase).

Citation key: nice and curious.

Here: Nice and curious both contribute excessive scruple in the coordinated description.

Context: Burton attacks schismatics who reject ceremonies even in morally neutral matters; this is his polemical account alongside criticism of other religious groups.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: nice & curious schismaticks

Modern rendering: over-scrupulous schismatics

Word and construction: The two original adjectives are consolidated into one modern adjective; neither individually accounts for a separate modern word.

Sense relation: Excessive scruple also governs the criticism of ceremonial refusal.

Translation layer: Two coordinated source adjectives share one modern equivalent.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.